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As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended this year’s Weapons of Mass Creation Fest in Cleveland, OH. Throw out all of your preconceptions of your traditional, stuffy conference folks. This conference boasted of 20 speakers, 20 featured designers, and over 30 bands and it was like something I’ve never experienced…in a really good way. WMC Fest was founded by designer and illustrator Jeff Finley, partner of Go Media, a Cleveland-based, full-service agency. Jeff and his team have planned, organized, and executed an amazing experience for designers, writers, and creators in a centralized, mid-west environment that is Cleveland, Ohio.

This year’s activities were broken up into three venues; the Reinberger Auditorium, Saigon Plaza, and iLTHY Workshop. Fortunately for the organizers and the attendees, these three separate buildings are in close proximity to one other.

The Reinberger Auditorium boasts of a intimate setting for the speakers to give their talk, which at times may have been more intimate than the speakers would want. For several of the presentations, people spilled onto the stage while they did their talk. It kind of gave that punk rock show feel, which I thought was cool.

Saigon Plaza housed the 30+ bands for the weekend on two stages (inside and outside), as well as the pre-fest mixer, and a breakdance competition. Because of the heat that weekend, it made for a rather warm setting. Only after the sun went down, could you slip outside, enjoy several drinks, and escape the heat.

The iLTHY Workshop allowed 20 designers to showcase some of their work in the Art & Design Show gallery. Also inside the iLTHY space were many other designers selling their prints, T-shirts, books, pennants, and stickers.

Overall, Weapons of Mass Creation 3 was extremely fun and rewarding. I met some really great people and got to hear designers who I’ve admired for quite some time speak and had the opportunity to talk with them after their presentation on a one-on-one level. It’s events like this that transform (in my head, at least) well-known design superstars into normal, everyday people, just like you and I. We all do the same thing; create for a living. If we can connect at that personal level and leave the pretentiousness at the door, our community will continue to get better and stronger. I’d like to thank everyone who had a hand in this year’s fest. It was a huge success and I hope to make it next year.

I will be making 2 more WMC Fest-related posts in the next few days, highlighting the speakers of this year’s event. Stay tuned.

Brian Cummings website
Designer and illustrator Keenan Cummings created a website for his dad, who is a very talented voice actor. I followed the faces as Keenan created them on dribbble (1, 2, 3), and the end result is really awesome. I love how each one of the faces ties into a specific type of voice. Oh, and check out the little flying Brian Cummings twitter bird. Nice touch!
(via Keenan Cummings/dribbble)

Triforce Tribute
Design + crafts + everything Zelda. I never played the game (ZELDA NERDS REVOLT!), but can get behind some serious geekery for the game. This show is sure to be very successful.
(via David Sizemore/twitter)

Weapons Declassified: Jeff Finley
Weapons of Mass Creation Fest founder Jeff Finley gets featured, and talks about how WMC Fest came to be and the concept behind it. Pissed I won’t be able to make it up to Cleveland this year for WMC Fest. Next time, Gadget…
(via Jeff Finley/twitter)